8 Recruiting Methods Guaranteed To Get Great Candidates

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Attracting talent to your organization seems like it might be a simple task, but it’s actually harder than it looks. Depending on the job, requirements or skills may differ, and every company has unique needs and expectations for the individuals they hire. This means human resources and recruiters must use different hiring tactics to appeal to specific candidates.

There are different types of recruiting methods that can be used to recruit individuals to your business, and these are dependent on the role, department, and sometimes even the hiring manager. Because skills and experience differ so widely, many times, it’s impossible to use the same hiring methods to find the best candidates across departments.

Recruiting Methods

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are a wide variety of recruiting methods to help attract specific talent to your organization. Sometimes it may even take a little trial and error to make sure you have the most effective recruiting strategy in place. Here are some great recruitment methods to consider.

• Direct advertising. Put your job opportunity on career sites, job boards, social media sites, and more. Consider putting money behind these advertisements to boost their reach and further promote your branding.

• Talent pools. As an organization, you should always keep a record of candidates who may have applied but not landed a job at your company, even though they were highly skilled. When an opening appears, you can then tap your talent pool to see if there is any interest from past candidates.

• Employee referrals. As mentioned above, employee referrals are one of the best ways to get new candidates interested in your company. Consider an employee referral program as well, to incentivize your existing employees to tap their networks for potential candidates.

• Rehire. By keeping a positive offboarding experience, you may have the ability to reach out to past employees to rehire them. Sometimes called ‘boomerang’ employees, these individuals already know your company and its culture. This can reduce cost per hire and eliminates the risk of a bad hire.

• Internal hiring. You may have employees that work at the company who are looking for a new challenge. Rather than losing them as an employee, consider having a program where employees can either pursue promotions or internal transfers without consequence.

• Recruitment agencies. If you are part of a lean team, consider the use of recruitment agencies. These businesses can help you outsource the recruitment process to professionals who can get it done quickly. Even if you have an existing HR staff, recruitment agencies can be great for hard-to-fill positions, too.

• Internships. Internships can be an excellent way of vetting an employee while gaining extra hands to finish projects. During an internship, managers can identify individuals who can be developed to potentially take over open positions or future roles. This is a great way to widen your candidate pool.

• Events. Recruitment events are typically held at universities, colleges, or individual job fairs. This is a perfect way to promote your opportunities and articulate the benefits of working at your company. You should always be prepared for the kind of candidates you want to attract at these events to make the most of your time.

Sourcing Recruiting Strategies

As the digital world gets savvier, sourcing recruiting strategies can feel like a full-time job. Especially as Millennials and Generation Z become the majority of the workforce, it’s important that sourcers and recruiters develop effective strategies to attract this population. Here are some strategies that can help.

• Plan. Although this seems self-explanatory, it’s a really important point to make. Before you do anything, take time to deeply analyze the job and its requirements to build the ideal candidate profile. This way, you’ll be adequately prepared with a benchmark to find candidates that you’d like to hire.

• Understand job requirements. Before you begin your candidate search, be sure you understand every requirement of the job. Discuss with the hiring manager to ensure they have the same expectations. You should also work to understand if the hiring manager is open to hiring a candidate with less experience to be upskilled.

• Tap past candidates. If you have interviewed for a position in the past, chances are you still have resumes of interested candidates on file. Consider looking through these to see if there are any potential candidates that may be a good fit for the open role.

• Be forward-looking. Encourage internal employees or recruiters to always be on the lookout for future candidates. Additionally, pay attention to your company’s growth plan to work on predicting hiring needs for upcoming periods. This can help you get a head start on any workplace shifts.

• Expand your search. Don’t set and forget your job opening. Be sure you’re consistently modifying your search terms to try and widen your candidate pool. Remember that companies sometimes use different titles for the same role, so be sure you’re capturing all the terms that make sense for your search.

• Track everything. It’s a great idea to keep track of your recruiting metrics, including how many attempts it takes to get a response, reply rates, how long nurturing a candidate might take, how long from an initial interview to hire, and where the best candidates are sourced from.

• Use digital resources, Social media platforms, and job boards can enhance your company branding exponentially. Consider using a variety of different sources where you can post your listing to widen your candidate pool. Be sure to think outside the box as well, such as using industry-specific sites like Behance or Github.

Tips for Recruitment

Recruitment is primarily the job of your company’s human resources department. However, to be successful in attracting the right candidates, the entire team should be involved in the recruitment process. This is because there is no one as knowledgeable about a team as those who work on it. They must be on board when adding new candidates to the team.

• Focus on referrals. One of the best tips in recruitment is to focus on employee referrals. No matter the business, there are typically many employees who have worked with previous organizations. They may have worked with other talented individuals whose work ethic they can vouch for, and this can help reduce the time spent on recruitment and surface qualified and vetted candidates.

• Improve candidate experience. To encourage existing and future candidates, be sure to focus the majority of your attention on the candidate experience. The candidate’s opinion of the company begins at the moment of recruitment, so it’s important to ensure they recognize you care about your people before they’ve even joined the team.

• Make offboarding smooth. Even though it seems counter-intuitive, you want to also make sure you have a fantastic offboarding process for employees leaving your company. Employees who have worked for you in the past can make great brand ambassadors. It’s very common for potential employees to reach out to current or past employees to get a better understanding of their experience.

• Use tools to make your job easier. Of course, you want to make sure your recruitment process is easy and seamless. Don’t be afraid of modern tools or digital platforms. Instead, use them to your benefit. Be sure you’re not making your candidates jump through hoops before they’ve even joined your team. This is a sure way to turn employees off from your company.

• Collaborate and communicate. Finally, you want to ensure you are collaborative in the hiring process. You should include human resources and the team for which the individual will be working, but consider including other teams as well. Employees do not work in silos at successful businesses, so ensure you’re taking everyone’s thoughts into consideration.

Recruiting Methods FAQ

1. What are recruitment methods?

   Recruitment methods are types of strategies or processes that businesses use to attract individuals to potentially fill an open job position.

2. Are recruitment methods effective?

   If your recruitment process is fast and efficient, it can be considered effective for both the employer and the candidate.

3. How do you successfully recruit?

   Start by considering your needs and then work to promote your job opening to potential candidates.

Author

Caitlin Mazur

Caitlin Mazur is a freelance writer at Zippia where she has written 140+ articles that have reached over 1 mil viewers as of June 2023. Caitlin is passionate about helping Zippia’s readers land the jobs of their dreams by offering content that discusses job-seeking advice based on experience and extensive research.